Oregon Ceramic Artist, Cary Weigand: In Pursuit of the Untamable

Come away, O human child!To the waters and the wildWith a faery, hand in hand,For the world’s more full of weeping than youcan understand.

~ William Butler Yeats

I

n a time where so much of our interaction with our environment offers little more opportunity for involvement than a press of a button or the rapid blur of fingers on a keyboard, there is a hunger for the tactile. As foreign and intimidating as it may have become, we crave physical engagement. The pleasure of pressing against something and having it push back ~ or give way to our touch.

Consider the artist who creates in clay, the one who is not afraid to get her hands dirty as she works to form a three-dimensional replica of what she sees inside her head, feels inside her soul.

How can such an experience so rooted in our most primal of needs for touch, not bring us closer to both the mysterious and the real?

The Trapper and Companion Dreaming Together | Cary Weigand

INTERVIEW WITH OREGON SCULPTOR, CARY WEIGAND

Drain, Oregon ~

Deanna Elaine Piowaty: Cary, your sculptures in clay take us to some richly conceived places. Where do these micro-worlds come from?

Cary Weigand: Internal and external micro-worlds can get pretty overwhelming. The microbes in soil that act as a medium of exchange for nourishment comes to mind. A moment may give way to a concept that I begin with, however the process of layering the clay takes time, so developing the concept becomes something more akin to the growth of branches on a tree.

Deanna Elaine Piowaty: Have you ever been surprised by the direction a piece as taken you?

Deanna Elaine Piowaty: What were some of the stories that ignited you as a child? What feeds your imagination now?

Companionship of Guardian Spirits | Cary Weigand

Cary Weigand: The influence of growing up in Hawaii with its religious diversity, even over particular stories. Visions of shrines ~ Buddhist, Hindu, Catholic ~ all within a block of each other, surrounded by ocean. I want to express their relationship with one another, but it’s even more about the way the ocean moves than the stories themselves.

Deanna Elaine Piowaty: Who were your dearest childhood companions? How important was it for you to be out in nature? How essential is it for you even now (or even more so now) to be connected to the wilds?

Cary Weigand: We always had pets growing up.

Connecting to the untamable and the uncontrollable feels like the irony of life.

Let Them Leave Us Behind | Cary Weigland

Deanna Elaine Piowaty: What fills you with wonder?

Cary Weigand: Definitely my dog, but also the feelings and thoughts of connectedness. That we are part of a greater whole and nothing is separate.

Hunting Dark Spirits in Water Weeds | Cary Weigland

Deanna Elaine Piowaty: If you could only pack your very essentials to take with you on a canoe trip to parts unknown and with no pre-planned date to return?

We Will Find Our Way | Cary Weigland

Cary Weigand: What would be the essentials that I would take? Oh my, well I better find someone who can help me with survival skills to this unknown place. I think of my dog as a guardian spirit in my own life. This is why most of my sculptures incorporate these types of spirit entities as they exist externally and internally.

Deanna Elaine Piowaty: When you’re working on a piece that holds perhaps some sadness for you, what is that process like? Is it difficult to stay in that emotional space for too long? Do you need to periodically pull out and shake those feelings off? Or does it work best if you’re willing to make yourself go deep and stay there until the piece is done?

The Boat is Sinking | Cary Weigand

Cary Weigand:

I hope that what may appear as sadness is instead understood as quiet reverence. I hope for my work to be about listening and trying to understand instead of displays of power. Personally, when sitting in sadness, there seems to be a deeper resonance of love and forgiveness underneath it. On the flip side, what I do struggle with is depression and anxiety. I can’t quite seem to figure out what’s underneath this one, as it feels more like an inescapable affliction. Because of the way I layer the clay, day by day, I can’t just stop on a piece, I have to continue to work no mater what I am experiencing.

Deanna Elaine Piowaty: What keeps you balanced?

Cary Weigand

Cary Weigand: Still working on this one, but fundamentally I strive for whole organic food, and falling in love with the little things of life: dog whiskers, the sound of wind and shadows, the music in landscapes.

Wilderness of my Soul | Cary Weigland

Deanna Elaine Piowaty: What led you to become a sculptor? What gifts does working in clay afford you that is vastly different from working in less tactile mediums?

Soul Cake | Cary Weigland

Cary Weigand: Words and logically making sense have always been a struggle. I took some art classes at a community collage in my 20’s and it become a profound form of expression for me. The clay class in particular, where I could poke, push and tear, took on the beginnings of a love affair that changed into a relationship of love and respect.

Cary Weigand

Further Notes

Cary Weigand was born and raised in Hawaii, where she earned her BFA and MFA from the University of Hawaii in 2003. Cary’s work has been published in Ceramics Technical, and she was awarded one of Ceramics Monthly’s Emerging Artists for 2011.

The Art Spirit Gallery is honored to be the exclusive gallery showing Cary’s work. Her show opens this weekend and runs through May 31, 2014.

Cary Weigand will conduct an informal discussion and demonstration in the gallery starting at 1 on Sat., May 10. Everyone is Welcome.

"My paintings are allegorical, but I expect each viewer will bring their own interpretation to a piece. The question one asks depends on the individual interpretation. If it’s a superficial read of literal abuse or abasement, then that is the subject being addressed within the viewer. If there is a more complex interpretation stemming from one’s life experiences, then the piece becomes personal, and asks questions the viewer is interested in answering."

"If only I had parented differently, if only I had been a better child, if only I had been more desirable, then the addict would never have chosen their addiction over me. The truth is that addiction is a complicated process that no other person can be responsible for, only the addict. To believe otherwise is at the heart of codependency."
~Andrew Nargolwala, psychotherapist

"I was a little surprised to hear so many people express that they perceive my pieces as being intentionally disturbing. Wanting to explore the workings of the unconscious tends to make people feel uncomfortable. They imagine death...I like to think of insects caught in amber."

"A poet looks at the world a little differently from others, and so does a scientist. I am very fortunate to be both. I find beauty in the cosmological consequences of dark matter, as much as I do in the written and spoken word. I appreciate the beauty in Heisenberg's principle as much as Matisse's economy of line. I'm probably one of the few poets in the world who literally dreams about tensor equations."
~Samuel Peralta, physicist and award-winning author of Sonata Vampirica

"Fantasy by definition is an escape, and it was a way for me to avoid difficult situations and emotions in my adolescence; however, I don’t think of reading as escapism. I think the activities of daily life are more commonly an escape from difficult or strong emotions. It’s in literature and art that one can usually come into more direct contact with those things. That’s why art is so fascinating. Even fantasy books, ironically."

"No one lives a bloodless existence. Everything that is repressed eventually finds a way out, even if it is only in the deepest of unremembered dreams. Though I’d rather it was with honesty, acceptance, a bold step, forgiveness and joy. Otherwise we tend to get all twisted up. Art, like love, does keep us alive; and, like love, it has the power to return us to our humanity when nothing else can."
~Interview with British poet, essayist, author, John Siddique

"This is like a kaleidoscope creating different images," says the artist of his work. "Like sounds flowing through the four windows, creating a stereo panorama, full of excitement and anxiety."
~Leo Bugaev, photographer, Russia

Many of the sights and sounds we’re subjected to in our society are harsh and disturbing. Psychologically and spiritually toxic. Scenes of cruelty, vindictiveness, ugliness and pettiness saturate the media and poison the mental atmosphere. I like the fact that I am sending out into the world images, pictures, little visions, that may do a tiny bit to counteract all that and communicate a sense of beauty, gentle humanity, grace, even holiness. It makes me feel like I’m doing something worthwhile in this sad, sad world.

One of the gifts of Aleah Chapin's body-of-work is the idea that true intimacy is achieved first and foremost by revealing oneself honestly. That through vulnerability we are able to deeply connect. One’s imperfections can actually make connection with others deeper, stronger. More real.

"When I make a photograph, it has the feeling of a miracle. Almost like a zen thing. The good pictures, I can’t take full credit for them. You don’t make a photograph so much as receive it. I wander around with my eyes open, and I’m just hoping for the best. Sometimes things that you’d never think would be special, you just hit upon, not fully understanding at the time why."
~Gary Briechle, photographer, Rockland, Maine

The former dockyard worker from Hiroshima decided that instead of creating one enduring piece to serve as metaphor for a love never-ending, he would construct a series of temporary installations meticulously fashioned from the painstakingly slow arrangement of so many tiny grains of salt.

"I was a little surprised to hear so many people express that they perceive my pieces as being intentionally disturbing. Wanting to explore the workings of the unconscious tends to make people feel uncomfortable. They imagine death...I like to think of insects caught in amber."